New tests with old data

The discussion of new tests of relativity must begin with a definition of the word new. Included, under that rubric, not only tests that have never been attempted before or never produced a useful result, but also those that may be repeated with significantly improved results. Thus, the classical tests insofar as they have been recently refined are discussed and the results are given obtained at the Center for Astrophysics (CFA). A new test of relativity is described via the detection of the de Sitter precession of the Moon's orbit. These tests, when considered in the parameterized post-Newtonian (PPN) framework, have all involved determining combinations of beta and gamma. A further topic of consideration is that of old data. In attempting to improve a test of relativity, particularly when the effect to be discerned is a secular one, such as the relativistic perihelion advance of Mercury, it is important to maintain the original set of data, so that the experiment need not start all over

Shaping Pre-Service Teachers\u27 Attitudes: An Inquiry Approach to Course Reform

The purpose of the study was to investigate the development of pre-service teachers’ attitudes toward teaching science with inquiry methods as the result of their participation in the two-hour elementary science methods class. Southwestern Oklahoma State University is a partner in the Oklahoma Teacher Education Collaborative (OTEC) which is funded by the National Science Foundation’s reform effort, Collaboratives for Excellence in Teacher Preparation (CETP). The reform effort focuses on the revision of the teacher preparation courses with emphasis on a systemic change in the method in which math, science, and education methods courses are taught across Oklahoma. Nine Oklahoma universities, including the University of Tulsa, Oklahoma State University, the University of Central Oklahoma, Northeastern Oklahoma State University, Cameron University, Langston University, Tulsa Community College and Southwestern Oklahoma State University, have focused on revising the identified courses with inquiry-based instruction

Solvent coarse-graining and the string method applied to the hydrophobic collapse of a hydrated chain

Using computer simulations of over 100,000 atoms, the mechanism for the hydrophobic collapse of an idealized hydrated chain is obtained. This is done by coarse-graining the atomistic water molecule positions over 129,000 collective variables that represent the water density field and then using the string method in these variables to compute the minimum free energy pathway (MFEP) for the collapsing chain. The dynamical relevance of the MFEP (i.e. its coincidence with the mechanism of collapse) is validated a posteriori using conventional molecular dynamics trajectories. Analysis of the MFEP provides atomistic confirmation for the mechanism of hydrophobic collapse proposed by ten Wolde and Chandler. In particular, it is shown that lengthscale-dependent hydrophobic dewetting is the rate-limiting step in the hydrophobic collapse of the considered chain.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures, including supporting informatio

Witnessing history: a personal view of half a century in public health

Former Chief Medical Officer Sir Kenneth Calman recently celebrated 50 years in medicine. It was a period which saw the evolution of the public health agenda from communicable diseases to diseases of lifestyle, the change from a hospital-orientated health service to one dominated by community-based services, and the increasing recognition of inequalities as a major determinant of health. This paper documents selected highlights from his career including the Aberdeen typhoid outbreak, AIDS, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, foot and mouth disease, radioactive fallout, the invention of computerised tomography and magnetic resonance imaging, and draws parallels between the development of the modern understanding of public health and the theoretical background to the science 100 years earlier

A Call for Abolition: The Disavowal and Displacement of Race in Critical Security Studies

We offer a rejoinder to Security Dialogue’s call for reparative work on race and racism in Critical Security Studies, questioning the ability of a discipline at the heart of an Antiblack world, to engage in truly reparative practices. The attempt to incorporate questions of race and racism into the discipline requires a disavowal, as it denies that Critical Security Studies emerged from and is embedded in systems, structures and institutions of power that rely on Antiblackness. This leads to a displacement, for it assumes that race and racism remain separable from Critical Security Studies, refusing to acknowledge that the discipline has always been part of the problem. Thus, we make two main points in response to calls for reparation from within Critical Security Studies. Firstly, that there can be no openings for truly reparative work from the position of the discipline, it remains within the grounds of Antiblackness. Secondly, that there can be no repair of Critical Security Studies, there can be no ethico-political future for it other than abolition

After the End of the World? Rethinking Temporalities of Critique and Affirmation in the Anthropocene

The contemporary era of the Anthropocene has undermined linear views of progress and development. In its wake, alternative futural imaginaries have become central to critical and decolonial accounts in the discipline of International Relations. We argue that radical imaginaries of alternative non-modern futures risk failing to account fully for the ongoing violence and exclusions of modernity. We identify two strands of Anthropocene work, the first focusing on critique and reconstruction of governance in the face of climate change and environmental destruction, and the second looking for decolonial affirmative ways of being drawn from the experiences of the dispossessed of modernity. Both these approaches to futurity seek to move beyond a modernist world to new futures. In our argument, we set out an alternative perspective, the Black Horizon, which rejects the call to imagine new productive futures, and instead focuses on the deconstruction of modernity, in search of ending the current world of antiblackness, rather than critique or affirm its existence. Thus, even though contemporary critical and decolonial approaches stress the attention to ontology, alterity, and difference, in their attempts to ground alternative worlds in existing practices or knowledges, they offer salvific alternatives, whilst leaving the foundations of our current world intact